Elephant Live Blog 4

So after a little bit more work last night, and a bit this morning my Mammoth is done!

While I shall force you to wait till the Gallery's opening to view the final version here is a preview of things to come...
So here is my sad little guy in the middle of his arctic abyss...

In the final version he is posed and there is a bit more going on in the environment, but only a bit more.

The only clue you get is this epic fail of a render I tried with my snow effect. What is going on with the snow you'll have to predict.

So that concludes my live blogging for this gallery. This must constitute my shortest 3Ding creation for ART Evolved, but I was aiming for something simple and non time consuming. I have a lot of other projects on the go. All due this New Year!

Elephant Live Blog 3

Here we are, nearly the end of my first day's attempt, and my critter is 75% done after a mere 4 hours. A first for sure.

A quick aside. The cartoony fur job was inspired by an ancient screw up on my part way way back when... Looked bad back then, hilarious now. So remember kids, always learn from your mistakes!

So starting on the Mammoths face.

The tusks needed to be brought down.

This first attempt at the trunk half looks funny as the shader didn't match...

Furring the face has been proving a challenge much like the feet...

First thing I did was seperate the head into a forehead "blub" and face. This way I could make the face fur thinner and the blub thicker.

Again the eye holes were proving a titch fussy...

It took a few tries...

However a little preserverance and you can manage anything!

Elephant Live Blog 2

So got a leg done just before post 1.

Here is my progress with it.

Here is how they started.

Adding hair to them I got this. Wasn't totally happy with their orientation.

A slight tweak later, and presto! Contentness...

Now to add some toes. This was proving a titch harder than I thought...

However with some patient reapplying of my replicator I cleared enough space for the toes.

So now I had to add the toes. Which on the first go were too tight to each other.

However with the hair clearing I'd done gave me the effect I was going for.

Though I'd cleared a bit too much of the shag from the inside...

So a quick Adjeustment and we were right as rain.

I'd almost be embrassed to post this thing as just the modelling I've done. It is nice and simple, which on one hand is kind of neat. Yet it isn't that impressive...

Adding my hair (which has been proving to be about 70% of my time expended) I get something rather impressive!

He is a virtual muppet!!!

Now on to the imposing task of the head...

Elephant Live Blog 1

Righteo, a Mammoth is the order of the day. I still don't have a clue what I'm aiming to do.

I do know I have NO interest in a full on scientific reconstruction of one at this point in time. Mammals bore me most of the time, and frankly I have no use for a Mammoth. So rather then enter into the very time consuming process of making a realistic Mammoth, I'm aiming for something not real...

What and how I have no clue!

So I've spent the last 40 mins playing around.


I've so far only really built the body. It is a simple thing, but should suffice for the moment.

Espeically when I add the Wolly part to it, it looks not too bad. Though the Wolly was a bit too big here.

So I've just been playing with the size of the shaginess.
This was what I ended up deciding on.

However I tried the next size down which ended up looking TOO real...

Added the shader, and I think I'm off to a good start.

I've just started on legs, but literally just started. So I'll leave them to next hours post, as I expect they'll take up the majority of that time.

Live Blogging Mammoth

Been a while since I've live blogged (been a while since I've had time to do anything on this blog really). So here we go...
Start watching here every hour for progress on my upcoming Elephant. Not sure what I'm doing yet, so this should be fun for all of us!

Soundtracks: 2010 Holds Up As A Great Year!!!

When I jokingly titled my soundtrack posts of the last year to the effect of "keep it coming" 2010, I didn't expect the trend to hold up!?! While overall the movies of 2010 haven't been fantastic (no wonder Hollywood is complaining of losses this year for the first time in 3 years), the few I see also all seem to have amazing music (or my default composers deliver, in the case of Airbender... I'm not touching that one without Rifftracks!).


So here we are at the close of the year, and once again another round of amazing scores bombards us! Admittedly I've only seen/heard one of these, but all accounts I'm hearing is both are highlights of the year, and it has been a year full of highlights score-wise so far!

TRON Legacy by Daft Punk

First up is the new TRON. Having watched the movie a mere day and a half ago, you might be surprised to hear I'm ranting and raving about the music from it already, but I assure you it is rant worthy.

To start off with TRON was such a mediocre movie (it was fun, but nothing I'm desperate to see again soon) that any and all good components leapt out to bored little me in the theatre. The visuals were all very slick and pretty (I must also say the lack of any shaky cams was such a relief!), but after a while especially in non action sequences, they got old. Fortunately the movie was never completely losing me as the music was constantly there to remind me what a wondrous and interesting concept I was watching.

The TRON score by movie music rookies Daft Punk is an 80's nostalgic video game rock opera of unbelievable awesomeness!

For me the most appealing part of the score is the homage to 80's synth music. Best of all it is a homage, and not a direct use. This retro element is still very listenable within a modern context, but invokes a sense of loving memory for when synthesisers were THE thing (where as listening to those old 80's scores now, while enjoyable, all have a cheese factor that is very inescapable).

I'll be covering TRON in full in my year end review of all the scores of 2010...

Though a quick note if you're looking to buy this score beware that with every means and vendor you'll get different music. While you'll always get the base 22 tracks of the score, all the different products have different bonus "exclusive" tracks not available on the other vendors version (Itunes, Amazon, the CDs, etc.)

Narnia 3 by David Arnold

Having not watched the movie or listened to this soundtrack, I can not directly comment. However the majority of the soundtrack community is rather energized about the new Narnia score.

I am intrigued as David Arnold, a composer I rather liked in my teens for his work in the 90's, has since dropped off my radar apart from his excellent music for the new Bond films, replaces one of my current favourites Harry Gregoson-Williams. In all honesty Gregoson-William's Narnia scores are not my all time favourites of his work. They have some great battle music, and Ashlan's theme is awesome, but otherwise the majority of it is meh.

I hear Arnold returns to his prime of ID4 and Stargate with the new Narnia. So hopefully I can track this down and have an opinion for the review of all of 2010.

My Big News of 2010

Been meaning to get this post up for literally months now!

My work life and situation has been the most blog unfriendly I can imagine. I'll probably post about it at some point, but not to digress from this story again, and risk more months of delay!

We time travel back to the long ago month of August 2010...

A couple takes a ever so brief summer vacation. At the end of their last full delay the boy friend pulls over into this very innocent and unassuming Saskatchewan field (due to the wind turbines you can just make out on the horizon in the photo).

His excuse is to photograph the amazing sunset... Which he insists girlfriend take.

So that while she is distracted, he can spring his cunning trap!

Getting down on one knee so that when she turns around...

He can propose!

So as of August 1st me and Lady R got engaged!

Not that it was a total surprise to her, she knew I was likely to ask the question as she helped pick out the ring (in the failure to get things properly rolling here in Canada, we discussed our long term future, and as marriage helps open a few doors for us internationally, we decided that would be our course... I just decided to have some fun setting it up :P)

However I "accidentally" gave her a false idea for when I'd have the ring. Acquiring it a full 2 weeks earlier than she thought, I sprung it on her during our Cypress Hills trip! It was quite stressful trying to organically launch into the question. Everything is a barrier yet an opportunity...

The scariest point in the trip for me (even compared to losing total vision while driving for 2 seconds going 100km) was when going for the ring in my bag I discovered Lady R's wallet on top of ring's box... She'd gone into my bag innocently, but nearly found the treasure hidden within! Thankfully the ring box camouflaged perfectly with my bag, or it would have been game over man!

So the big event in 2011 will be our wedding in May!

Now to catch up on blogging in general in the next bit, as I have spare time again...